earning exactly what had taken place on
the awakening at the camp, when, utterly worn out and suffering, not one
of the four felt in a fit condition to stir, Griggs, naturally the
strongest of the party and best able to cope with the arduous work,
being by far the worst.

But he was the first to recover upon the discovery being made that the
boys were gone. In fact, he took note of everything during the first
few minutes, and was able to point out that they had taken with them a
mule bearing the two water-barrels, and also found and pointed out the
trail the two ponies and the mule had made in the parching sand.

No one felt fit to stir, and the beasts of burden seemed to be in worse
plight than their masters.

But the doctor insisted upon a start being made at once, following upon
the trail, and all expected to come before long upon the pair lying dead
from thirst and exhaustion at the end of the track.

"We never expected to see you alive again, Chris," said the doctor; "and
when we came upon you at last, just as we all felt that we could go no
farther, we stopped short, no one daring to approach, for we found you
lying just as we had pictured you.

"The expedition was to all of us quite at an end, and we approached you
at last to lie down by your sides and die, when Griggs saw something
that neither I nor Ned's father had noted."

"What was that, father?" asked Chris.

"That the mule's head was pointing in our direction, and that the trail
on ahead was blurred, showing that you had been somewhere and were on
the way back. The next minute he was shouting frantically for us to
come on, and we did, having literally crawled up, to find you both alive
and the two casks full of that which saved our lives."

That night camp was made in the midst of plenty, and the sun rose in the
morning over the thick desert-heated air to shine upon the dazzling
waters of the lake and the rich forest-land spreading upward towards a
range of mountains of a vivid blue.

It seemed to be the land of plenty that they had reached, where
abundance of game awaited the rifle, fish in shoals were in the lake,
and, most attractive of all, away on the horizon, amidst the range of
mountains running to right and left, were peaks among any of which the
golden city of which they were in search might be waiting to be compared
with the unfortunate old prospector's map.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

OFF AGAIN.

A short halt of a day or two only